Method Platform Updates - December 9, 2011

Performance enhancements and a new multi-tenant beta!

Grid refresh speed - you should notice that everything and anything related to grids is significantly faster. Grids were previously doing extra unnecessary work which we found could be more intelligently optimized. This was especially the case on large screens with lots of objects, multiple grids and/or on-screen-load actions.

Grid fading - we now fade the grid while it loads or refreshes.

Grids that display recurring dates of a series are now faster, and more consistent with regular grids. Yes, you’ll now enjoy having the ability to temporarily show more and fewer rows like you do with regular grids.

Performance enhancement on "Go to Tab Link". Similar to the grid refresh enhancements, we optimized the way Go to Tab link action refreshed the screen with the new record, so it does less unnecessary work and shows your screen quicker!

Clear Screen For New Entry – you now have the ability to specify whether you want detached grids to refresh automatically or not. This enables you to have a faster action time if refreshing detached grids is not necessary.

Deadlock errors – larger company with greater than 50 users were seeing collisions, and performance degradation. After many iterations and optimizations, this has now been brought to a minimum. Thanks Jim C. & crew for your patience!

Method Email Queue Server - we have finally moved our specialized email queue server out of its 6 month beta and into production. Instead of sending emails directly, all emails sent from Method are now sent via in intermediate Method Email Queue Server (MEQS – say that 10 times really quickly). This provides a significant speed improvement because you don't have to wait for the email to finish sending in order to continue with your work.

Email server settings - you now have the ability to assign a port number, very useful in the case that your email server has specialized needs (such as Microsoft Live servers).

Looping performance enhancement - we rewired the process of looping through tables, grids and calendars to be significantly faster.

Action queues – goodbye "an action is already in progress" yellow bars!! This is another performance enhancement, that introduces action queues, so if you click on multiple buttons or lose focus on multiple objects, the actions are queued so that they will complete in the order you initiated them, without the need for you to wait for the current action set to complete.

Enhanced validation - all in the name of performance, we have introduced more advanced and strict validation to ensure that all your Start Loops and Start Conditional Statements are properly closed. The downside is that if you had bad logic before, then you'll be stopped dead in your tracks until you fix them. To ease in the transition, we have provided temporary access to the previous version of Method:https://www.methodintegration.com/NovemberTemporaryLogin/

Roles - under Customize > Roles, you can now view and edit all users for a role. Previously, you had to individually edit each user under Customize > Users to view and change roles.

Link to Regular Login from Mobile Login page - we have removed the Create New Account link and replaced it with the link to the Regular Login.

Fix: Grid Dropdowns no longer scrunch as you type - previously if you had a dropdown in a grid, it would sometimes scrunch and cut off the text in the list as you typed. This is resolved.

And if all that wasn’t enough……. We have a new exciting beta - Multi-tenancy! This version includes massive behind-the-scenes changes that make Method "multi-tenant" – which allows multiple QuickBooks databases to sync to the same main Company Account. This finally gives franchisors the tools they need for call centers, consolidated reporting, and yes, the ability to customize one screen and have it instantly accessible by all franchisees. We are currently in a closed beta - contact us if you want to join. This is very exciting for us, as this has been at least a couple years in the getting this far.

@Mark - thanks for the feedback. Using the system internally, we've seen a considerable increase in speed. Glad to see you feel the same. As for the grid, if the grid fails for some reason, it will stay in the faded mode. If you are able to duplicate the steps to reproduce this, please post this onto the forum for us.

December 13, 2011 9:45 AM

About Method_Paul

While studying at Queen's School of Business in 1999, Paul founded Alocet Incorporated, developing 'QXpress', which later became the top rated field service scheduling add-on for QuickBooks.
Alocet Incorporated later went on to create Method Integration - an innovative small business management platform that allows users to create their own web apps for QuickBooks.